We’ve been getting a lot of questions about continuing education requirements for MGEVs. Glad you asked!<\/p>\n
You’ll note in our updated Program Policies that “MGEVS are\u00a0encouraged to seek at least 6 hours of continuing education each year and report it within MGLOG.” For the past several years, we have been moving toward the habit of reporting the training that you are already doing, and we continue to encourage you to learn. That’s a large part of why you became a MGEV in the first place — you want to learn more!<\/p>\n
We have been moving in this direction because of national standards for Extension Master Gardener (EMG) programs. In 2015, a set of standards was developed to describe the similarities among EMGs, regardless of where they trained or volunteered. In other words, if you heard the title “Extension Master Gardener,” what could you generally assume to be true about their qualifications? (If you want to read about this, we published a paper here<\/a>.) One of those national standards is for continuing education. Georgia was one of a handful of states without a continuing education requirement. Rather than mandate it and get everyone upset, I began encouraging volunteers to report what they are already doing and set an initial goal of 6 hours per year. We will increase that to 10 hours per year in 2020.<\/p>\n